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Quote by Rosamund Hodge

“They combed my hair and pinned it up, hung rubies in my ears and around my neck, painted rouge on my lips and cheeks, and anointed my wrists and throat with musk. Finally they hustled me in front of the mirror. A gleaming, crimson-clad lady stared back at me. Until this day, I had worn only the plain black of mourning, even though Father had told us when we were twelve that we could dress as we pleased. Everybody thought that I did it because I was such a pious daughter, but I simply hated pretending that everything was all right. "You look like a dream." Astraia slid her arm around my waist, smiling tremulously at our reflections. Everybody said that Astraia was the very image of our mother, and certainly she could not have gotten her looks anywhere else: the plump, dimpled cheeks, the pouting lips, the snub nose and dark curls. But I might have been born straight out of my father's head like Athena: I had his high cheekbones, his aristocratic nose, his straight black hair. In a rare burst of kindness, Aunt Telomache had once told me that while Astraia was "pretty," I was "regal";”

Quote by Rosamund Hodge

Book:Cruel Beauty
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Cruel Beauty

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Rosamund Hodge

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“We mean to say that Symbolism and Decadence — the negative attitude to which is indisputable to everyone except the "participants" — are genetically connected with everything brilliant and sublime created by the "unbound personality" during this period of time, from the Renaissance up to the development of electrical engineering; contrariwise, the border which they cannot cross is laid down where man understood that he was always "bound." The great continent of history, the continent of real deeds, practical needs, and more than all that, of received religion and the established Church - that is whose shore this stinking monster can never crawl into, that is where we are fleeing to from it, that is where man can always save himself. Where the monastery wall rises this surge of the faithless waves of history — no matter how strong it may become and how far it may spread around — will stop and fall back. ("On Symbolists & Decadence")”

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Book:Silver Age of Russian Culture
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“The religion of this 'I', the poetry of this 'I', and the philosophy of the same 'I' that from Poggio and Felelfo to Byron and Goethe produced a number of works astonishing for their profundity and brilliance have finally exhausted its content; and in the poetry of Decadence we see the rapid falling away of the empty shell of this 'I'. We remarked previously about the exaggeration without the exaggerated object, and about the precious style without the subject of this preciosity, which characterize this poetry — this is so in regard to its form; in regard to its content Decadence is above all hopeless egoism. The world, as an object of love, of interest, even as the object of indignation or contempt, has disappeared from this "poetry”; the world has disappeared, not only as an object exciting some reaction in this vapid 'I', but also as a spectator and possible judge of this 'I'; it is not even present. ("On Symbolists And Decadence")”

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Author:Vasily Rozanov
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“But these were dreams - and very ambitious dreams - of the future. For the present, he wrote what he could and set about the pleasurable task of revealing his talents to the world. To his mild surprise, the world remained singularly unimpressed. 'You have some excellent material here/ wrote one publisher, 'but our reader feels the presentation to be a little laborious, and consequently we do not... etc...' Well, that was pretty much the story. Winter drew on; Owen eked out his remaining money on food and fuel, then learnt a little about hunger and cold. One publisher took the trouble to send a list of reading, so that he might submit the kind of book they required, and he sought out the titles at the local library. He read with growing interest, and soon saw where he had gone wrong. The field seemed to be held by a group of writers whose terse, taut style suggested the breathless delivery of some vital message, the gist of which seemed to be that man had a mean destiny and that all was for the worst in the worst of all possible worlds. Owen was by this time so impoverished that he might have sought to share their generous publishing rights and big sales, but for the fact that he could not master the trick of seeing the Universe as a meaningless mistake, or the Human race as sick and soulless automata. He could have joined another, minor school, who wove elegant references to myth and faery-tale into their novels. He was, after all, seeking to do the same. But to his amazement he found that they did so, not with the intention of suggesting that the apparently commonplace might be wonderful, but that the apparently wonderful was, after all, merely commonplace. On a superficial reading they appeared to embody the ancient traditions in their works, but Owen, who could not get the knack of superficial reading, discerned that they were merely holding up a highly polished mirror to such subjects from a safe distance, producing as a result a diminished reflection, a perfect pigmy reversal of all that myth, legend and even homely folktales intended. While the ancient writers offered a simple, sometimes crude, or even ridiculous surface, beneath which the reader might discover unguessed levels of meaning, the work of the modern myth-mongers presented a clever, intricate and finely crafted surface, beneath which lay - nothing at all. And how could it have been otherwise, when true devotion to the Eternal Mysteries found no place in their hearts? There was no bedrock of belief. So he went his own outmoded way, as the days grew colder and the cupboard became bare. He was not aware that his circumstances affected his state of mind, but an objective eye might then have discovered in his work - in the sombre pages of The Night Before Winter, for instance - a distinctly darker thread. "The White Road”

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Book:The White Road
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